ro there is nothing that matters which is fifty
years old. One of the most remarkable facts in the agricultural
history of Japan is that a country with a teeming population and an
intensive farming should have left entirely undeveloped to so late a
period as the early seventies a great island of 35,000 square miles
which lies within sight of its shores. The wonder is that an attempt
on Yezo[234] was not made by the Russians, who, but for the vigorous
action of a British naval commander, would undoubtedly have taken
possession of the island of Tsushima, 700 miles farther south and
midway between Japan and Korea. Up to the time of the fall of the
Shogun the revenue of the lords of Yezo was got by taxing the harvest
of the sea and the precarious gains of hunters. The Imperial Rescript
carried by the army which was sent against certain adherents of the
Shogun who had fled there said: "We intend to take steps to reclaim
and people the island."[235] It is doubtful if at that period the
population was more than 60,000[236] (including Ainu).[237]

When Count Kuroda was put at the head of the Colonial Government he
went over to America and secured as his adviser-in-chief the chief of
the Agricultural Department at Washington. Stock, seeds, fruit trees,
implements and machinery, railway engines, buildings, practically
everything was American in the early days of Hokkaido. During a
ten-year period, in which forty-five American instructors were sent
for, five Russians, four Britons, four Germans, three Dutchmen and a
Frenchman were also imported.[238]

Governor Kuroda had a million yen placed at his disposal for ten years
in succession, and a million yen was a big sum in those days. Before
long there were flour mills, breweries, beet-sugar factories, canning
plants, lead and coal mining and silk manufacturing and an experiment
in soldier colonisation which owed something to Russian experiments in
Cossack farming. An agricultural school grew into a large agricultural
college; and this agricultural college has lately become the
University of Hokkaido, with nearly a thousand students.[239] How much
of a pioneer Sapporo College was may be gathered from the fact that
when I was in Hokkaido 67 out of the 140 men who were members of the
faculty had been themselves taught there. Dean Sato (Japan's first
exchange lecturer to American universities), Dr. Nitobe (Japanese
Secretary of the League of Nations) and Kanzo Uchimura were among the